My Crucial M500 SSD turned into a read only paper weight

[TripleHeinz]

My dear tom's community,

I'm in need for advanced knowledge. About two weeks ago my almost 4 years old Crucial M500 SSD, 240 GiB, m-sata drive turned into a read only device.
I had this drive for Windows 10 only. I taked really good care of it. I set all my "Documnets", "Images","Videos", "Download", etc personal folders into another Crucial M500, 240 GiB, standard 2.5" drive. I even have an extra WD HDD exclusively for write tasks, which is almost all of my programs.
I use my PC for programming so i'm 99% of the time in Notepad (really light usage overall, even when running my own programs). The drive was still reporting 100% of life span according to Storage Executive (Crucial's companion software).
Sometimes i do light gaming and so it happened that time i was playing Command and Conquer Red Alert 3 Uprising which i think it makes writes to the "C:\" drive (my beloved SSD). Suddently while playing i was presented with a BSOD (can't remember the error code and description, it was very quick) and the system rebooted but after that i got a message about an UEFI error, something with a corrupt boot file and that i should start my PC in recovery mode and fix it. So i did that, read all kinds of Win10 guides about the issue. It was all clear and easy to solve with a bunch of commands but for every action the system responded "drive is write protected". I tried to reformat in linux but the drive was definitely locked.
I understand that SSDs lock up when detecting when something is not right with the drive but my unit was healthy, it had many years to live. There was no power outage whatsoever, nor is the need to backup anything in it, just want to format the unit and start fresh again.
I do not have another drive to use as a temporary main drive to diagnose my SSD using Storage Executive. Can't just go and buy a replacement, just can't right now.

Is there a way to "unlock" a "precautiously locked but healthy drive"?
Any advice i could follow to revive my drive?
Was it EA's fault?

Computer <Mod Edit> happens my friends, it's just hard to deal with it.

Thank you for your time and guidance.

 

[Sedivy]

This seems like an actual hardware issue you should contact crucial about. It would be interesting to see what the error was but considering you can't boot it's a moot point. Is there a way you can back up your ssd since you say you can still read it from something like live linux? That way if you need to rma, you don't lose your system files. Is it out of warranty?

 

[TripleHeinz]

This seems like an actual hardware issue you should contact crucial about. It would be interesting to see what the error was but considering you can't boot it's a moot point. Is there a way you can back up your ssd since you say you can still read it from something like live linux? That way if you need to rma, you don't lose your system files. Is it out of warranty?

Hi, thanks for your reply and your suggestion. The drive is recognized perfectly by the computer, it seems to be just fine. I used a live linux to access the ssd and also when reinstalling windows 10 the drive is recognized and all its partitions but the new installation cannot be performed on the ssd nor any partitions can be deleted. I do not need to backup the ssd, it is a windows only drive, i just need to reformat the drive.
Most probably is out of warranty, i mean, it had very few writes on average but it has almost 4 years since purchase and first use.

UPDATE: The m500 has a 3 year warranty so yeah...
It is strange that my other m500 purchased and used together is still doing fine.

 

[dudeman509]

Hmm, weird. I've absolutely hammered my M500 with R/W cycles, ~20 TB written to the drive, and ~ 97% predicted life left. Had it 3-4 years now I think. It and the MX100 have been phenomenal SSDs.

 

[Sedivy]

Yeah it's weird. This is why I'm saying contacting crucial to see if there's anything to be done. If not rma, at least to see if there's any firmware to be installed or some way to unlock it that they don't advertise, to get it usable again. It seems to be mostly functional so it's not like you can't attempt anything. It's weird but it just goes to show, it's a lottery what you get when buying parts.

 

[TripleHeinz]

As soon as I can, I'm going to strip my nephew's computer to get its HDD and use it to boot my computer. It will be very interesting to see what Storage Executive reports. Just wait for the news.

I'm going to try contact Crucial but I doubt they'll give me a drive unlocker. I thought there was a tool like that or a procedure but i guess it is more complex than that. Thank you guys for your comments and suggestions.

 

[TripleHeinz]

Hmm, weird. I've absolutely hammered my M500 with R/W cycles, ~20 TB written to the drive, and ~ 97% predicted life left. Had it 3-4 years now I think. It and the MX100 have been phenomenal SSDs.

That is useful information. I did not have real data to compare against mine. I'll post my drive statistics once i'm able to extract it.

And yes, the M500 is a phenomenal drive. I would definitely buy another one if only had the money to spend on spare parts (which i don't right now so i must fix my current unit).

 

[TripleHeinz]

I'm baaack!
It took me forever to boot from another non-uefi drive but here i am with the results. I took screenshots and saved them using MS Paint.

Well, i do not know what to think about the drive. It is shown as healthy by Storage Executive but the software had a hard time keeping the drive online, it was dissapearing (from the software only, maybe Windows was doing something with it) and reapearing many times until after a couple of minutes it got stable and the drive stayed in place.

Here are the screenshots:


The drive is recognized by Windows.

But i could not access it from Windows Explorer.

Disk Management detects the drive and its partitions but it cant be formatted.

Storage Executive reports the drive as healthy. 6.52 TB written since April 2014. 99% of lifespan remaining.

Firmware is up to date.

S.M.A.R.T. info.

There was this SANITIZE DRIVE option in the software but it fails as well.

And that's all folks. I did mention the drive dissapeared from Storage Executive the first minutes. These are a couple of errors that i was getting but after a while they went away and the drive started to work fine in the software:

I hope these screenshots can help someone else with their issues. Storage Executive has a nice option to create a "drive's debug info" and send it directly to Crucial, so i did and attached a small explanation of the issue. I hope they get back in touch.

Comments?

 

[Sedivy]

I was comparing the smart details to my mx300 and while you do have errors logged compared to none on mine, your drive is also 4 years old vs only 10 months for me so can't tell if that raw read error rate is high or not. Interestingly, your write error rate is 0. Here's for comparison:


As it's a different model, probably wrong to compare directly though, so wait and see what crucial says.

 

[TripleHeinz]

Quick update.
I do not know if Windows did something to my SSD while using an alternate boot drive for diagnostics but the main partition in the SSD went from RAW filesystem to NTFS and now the drive is perfectly accesible (READ ONLY, it hasn't magically fixed itself). So now i can explore the drive which is totally useless, but it is another proof that the drive is healthy. The SSD has been working fine (read only) in every boot, it is always detected and readable, it is healthy but do not know why can't i use it for writing too.

Crucial has not yet responded my request, most likely they won't. I've been without access to my workstation for a month, with all my work frozen. Don't know what else to do. I payed $120 for the SSD and do not want to let it go that easily.

I'm writing from a weak and unusable for work tablet. Cheers.

 

[Sedivy]

Hmmm. I suppose there's no way of going to ssd drive properties from whatever you're booting and in properties->security edit all permissions for said drive? Though this won't affect permissions from within windows installation on the ssd itself. But I'd be curious if it would work at all from your other drive.
If you could boot into ssd, then I'd suggest this http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2597859/fix-readonly.html but I don't think that would work from within a different operating system. I would try though. Cause if it succeeds, I'd proceed with wiping the ssd completely and removing all partitions, reformatting and only then trying to install windows back onto the ssd.

I also saw http://forums.crucial.com/t5/Crucial-SSDs/Bios-is-not-recognize-crucail-m4-SSD-64GB/m-p/64485#M19896 which is crucial's advice for resolving most booting issues but I don't hold much hope that'll work in this case. Still, if you're desperate might be worth a try.

 

[TripleHeinz]

Hmmm. I suppose there's no way of going to ssd drive properties from whatever you're booting and in properties->security edit all permissions for said drive? Though this won't affect permissions from within windows installation on the ssd itself. But I'd be curious if it would work at all from your other drive.
If you could boot into ssd, then I'd suggest this http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2597859/fix-readonly.html but I don't think that would work from within a different operating system. I would try though. Cause if it succeeds, I'd proceed with wiping the ssd completely and removing all partitions, reformatting and only then trying to install windows back onto the ssd.

I also saw http://forums.crucial.com/t5/Crucial-SSDs/Bios-is-not-recognize-crucail-m4-SSD-64GB/m-p/64485#M19896 which is crucial's advice for resolving most booting issues but I don't hold much hope that'll work in this case. Still, if you're desperate might be worth a try.

Hi, I've already tried setting drive permissions but the operation fails because again the drive is write protected.
Crucial did contact me and send me this Microsoft support link: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/askcore/2011/06/02/my-disk-is-read-only-help/. That procedure did not work for me, but as many other users I can use it to turn the partition from RAW to NTFS and have readonly access to the drive.

The only important thing I learned from this experience, that's worth sharing with you guys is: Do NOT store your important files inside a User's folder (My Documents, Desktop, etc) nor any Windows folder because if your SSD is locked and then you boot from another drive to recover the files then Windows will tell you that you don't have permissions to access the files and will kick you out. Then if you try to set the owner or folder permissions then you will get an error because the drive is write protected. You'll end up with a paperweight and lost all your files.

As for my drive, it is in good conditions but I do not know how to unlock it. Crucial does not know how to unlock it either.
I'm thinking that the reboot I experienced (actually there were 4 in a row, within 10 minutes each) that locked my SSD was due to MS spectre/meltdown patch, I have a Haswell cpu and automatic Windows updates were set by default. I really do not know about this but I never experienced reboots like that before until I heard about the spectre/meltdown patches for Haswell, in fact the pc rebooted like 2 times when booting from another drive. I haven't installed any fix my self so I really can't tell if it was a fix from MS, just a theory.
My computer has been sit there as a dead paper weight for months now, I gave up. It is a $700 paperweight.
If you have a working SSD then do not worry about writes, do not worry about wearing it. Just install and enjoy the experience, because no matter how good you take care of it, it can die on you at any random time.

 

[Sedivy]

Have you tried changing write permissions via command prompt? Yes it should ask you for windows admin password within command prompt, but I'd be curious if it kicks you off that way. I'd look you up a link on how to do this but I'm not at home atm and can't really do it.

 

[TripleHeinz]

Have you tried changing write permissions via command prompt? Yes it should ask you for windows admin password within command prompt, but I'd be curious if it kicks you off that way. I'd look you up a link on how to do this but I'm not at home atm and can't really do it.

I tried but it keeps saying "Drive is write protected" in the console. I'm using the ssd as a key chain now (remember it is a m-sata one so it has two holes = more keys), the most expensive keychain ever.

 

[Steve James]

Crucial drives are junk. Mine just died and I only had it 25% full

 

[TripleHeinz]

Crucial drives are junk. Mine just died and I only had it 25% full

Sorry to hear about that. Just for curiosity: Could you give us more details about the unit like model, years of use, terabytes written and how did it happen?

Overall,Crucial makes good SSDs but they had to have some failure rate and those were us. It happens in all brands.

 

[Steve James]

Crucial drives are junk. Mine just died and I only had it 25% full

Sorry to hear about that. Just for curiosity: Could you give us more details about the unit like model, years of use, terabytes written and how did it happen?

Overall,Crucial makes good SSDs but they had to have some failure rate and those were us. It happens in all brands.

I bought it in 2014 and it only had a 3 year warranty. According to Crucial any drive made before Aug 2017 is junk and you're screwed. I thought I could get at least 5 years out it because I only had the OS installed. I bought another brand drive with a longer warranty. One this is for sure I'm never buying anything Crucial again

 

[dudeman509]

Eh, failures happen. Same as with mechanical drives. Same with anything really. Just because one person's Toyota Camry breaks down doesn't mean they're all crap (I mean, I don't like them either, but they're a great road appliance).

The only SSD I've had crap out was a OCZ 100, and it gave fair warning before it did...that was an issue with the early Sandforce drives.

I have 2 MX100's in my fleet, a 512 and 256, as well as an old M500 256. They are thrown headlong into page file, writes, reads, etc. All have over 30 TB written to the drives, and are going on 4-5 years each. My brother has an Intel SSD that's been just as reliable. I have a new-to-me Samsung 850 Evo that actually had to be RMA'd when it kept freezing the whole machine trying to access the drive. They sent me a brand new one, and that one has been perfectly reliable.

Would I buy a Crucial SSD again? Absolutely - the MX500 looks great if I wanted another SATA one. I'd buy another Samsung too, despite that one drive - they have a reputation for being excellent drives as well. A Sandisk would be a hard sell for me - we have those in work computers, and they fail left and right, and are extremely slow if tons of writes are thrown their way.

 

[Steve James]

Eh, failures happen. Same as with mechanical drives. Same with anything really. Just because one person's Toyota Camry breaks down doesn't mean they're all crap (I mean, I don't like them either, but they're a great road appliance).

The only SSD I've had crap out was a OCZ 100, and it gave fair warning before it did...that was an issue with the early Sandforce drives.

I have 2 MX100's in my fleet, a 512 and 256, as well as an old M500 256. They are thrown headlong into page file, writes, reads, etc. All have over 30 TB written to the drives, and are going on 4-5 years each. My brother has an Intel SSD that's been just as reliable. I have a new-to-me Samsung 850 Evo that actually had to be RMA'd when it kept freezing the whole machine trying to access the drive. They sent me a brand new one, and that one has been perfectly reliable.

Would I buy a Crucial SSD again? Absolutely - the MX500 looks great if I wanted another SATA one. I'd buy another Samsung too, despite that one drive - they have a reputation for being excellent drives as well. A Sandisk would be a hard sell for me - we have those in work computers, and they fail left and right, and are extremely slow if tons of writes are thrown their way.

I would dump those junk drives before its too late. A year from now you'll be singing the same song